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About this project

Have you ever wanted to run a game company?

Mob Rules Games is a small, indie-startup founded on the core idea that we should develop both the game and the community of players at the same time, and that the two should work together as much as possible. We have three well-planned and exciting designs for a PC, Mac, Linux, and Ipad game: a head-to-head haunted house game, a strategy game about gorilla rebels fighting The Man, and an action-puzzle game about a hero who can stop time.

Everyone who pledges support to this project will get votes in proportion to their generosity. These votes will be good for the life of our company, not just for this first game. We’re asking for $20,000 to build a prototype version of whichever game the voters choose. Once the prototype is complete and released to all the voters, we’ll hold a second fundraiser to fund the complete game.

For every dollar you pledge, you get ten votes. As mentioned, those votes are good for the life of the company, and there will be plenty of other opportunities to exercise your votes as we move forward. But the very first vote might well be the most important one we ever have. Which game will we make?

Guerrilla Gorillais a squad-based strategy game about ape revolutionaries fighting The Man. You must plan carefully and use ambushes and tricky maneuvers to overcome The Man’s enthralled legions with your small but zealous band of simian guerrillas.

If strategy, revolution, and animal armies are your thing, vote for Guerrilla Gorilla!

Haunts is an asymmetrical haunted house game, where one side plays the brave explorers and the other side plays the supernatural entities that want them gone. Light and shadow, bravery and brains all come into play in this deadly game of hide and seek.

If you want an always-changing house of horrors, vote for Haunts!

In The Last Second you play Zeta Cervantes, a pulp-era super-scientist whose latest invention can freeze time. In a city beset by criminal mad men she must use her few stolen seconds to alter the scene of the crime that’s about to happen, turning the bad guys against themselves and pulling the innocents out of harm’s way.

If action puzzles and pulp-hero adventures are your thing, vote for The Last Second!

Mob Rules Games and Our Voters

We’re holding that crucial vote starting on November 24, 2011. Voting will be open for one week, and we expect it will be an exciting campaign. On December 1, 2011 we will announce the lucky winning game and get right down to work making it.

We want to build a studio based from the beginning on community support, open development methods, and transparent business practices. Instead of going to venture capitalists or traditional publishers to fund our fun, new games, we’re part of Open Game Labs. Open Game Labs provides us with the legal and technical support to get going and lets us focus on games. It’s going to be up to our community of customers to provide the financial support. That means it’s up to us at Mob Rules to cultivate that community by inviting you to be an integral part in creating some exciting new games and building a game studio that is answerable directly to you.

At Mob Rules, we refer to our community of supporters and customers as voters, and we do want to take as much wisdom as we can from our crowd of players. But we won’t consult the voters on every little decision. We also won’t consult them on every big decision. The Mob Rules developers have a vision for our games and are responsible for making them as fun and great as we can, and design by committee seldom produces stellar results. Still, there are plenty of times when there is no obvious right answer or when the opinions of our customers really are the best way to decide what to do next. And we think one of those is deciding what game should we make.

All of our software will be written in the Go programming language and licensed under its modified version of the BSD license:http://code.google.com/p/go/source/browse/LICENSE. We plan to release the source code for the games after their release.

For more information on the games, including regular updates, screen shots, art, designer diaries, and more, visit us at www.mobrulesgames.com and follow us on Twitter @mobrulesgames.

FAQ

No. We've already spent about $10,000 so far building the core software infrastructure and developing our three concepts. Another $20,000 will let us build a working prototype of the game that gets the most votes. We'll need to have a second, bigger fund raiser to finish it. But everyone who pledges $5 or more WILL get a copy of the finished game.

We love all three of these ideas. And if things go well, we're going to make all three of these games. But we've got to start somewhere, and we really do believe that since players are the ones who decide a game company's fate, it's in everyone's interest that we work together from day one.

The votes are good as long as there's a Mob Rules Games. We'll ask you to vote on future projects of course, but even during development we'll be polling our voters on issues of content and style. We have a vision for each of these games, but we also want to tap into the wisdom of our crowd of voters.

Support this project

Select this reward

Pledge $1 or more
About $1.00

VOTES: For every $1 you pledge, you get 10 votes. These votes are good for the life of Mob Rules Games, and can be used in any vote we call related to the studio in general and this launch project in particular. You’ll earn additional votes for referring other people, participating in events and discussions, and through other forthcoming activities that don’t necessarily require you to give us more money.

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Pledge $7 or more
About $7

COPIES OF THE GAME: You'll get advance copies of the demo we make with the funds raised here. You'll ALSO get a copy of the finished game when it's done next year. You’ll get a code to download the PC, Mac, or Linux version of the game when it launches.

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Pledge $15 or more
About $15

SPECIAL THANKS: Thank you! Thank you very much! We appreciate your support immensely, and will express those thanks again in the game’s credits and on our site. The more you give, the more enthusiastic (and large) our thanks will be. The amount you pledge will determine which tier of thanks we recognize you in, but you'll always get at least a little space to ad a personal message or a link to your own site. You of course get votes and a copy of the game as well!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $25 or more
About $25

BETA ACCESS: You’ll get access to the game when we start our beta test period for the final game. Yes, this means you’ll get to play an unfinished game which will have annoying bugs in it. But you can help us fix those bugs! And you get to play it way before anyone else, making you one of the coolest people we know.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $50 or more
About $50

VOTER ID CARD: A personalized Mob Rules Voter ID card, which declares your voter status to anyone who sees it and entitles you to bragging rights, advance access to special content and online events, and something super cool to put in your wallet.

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Pledge $75 or more
About $75

SPECIAL CONTENT: There will be some special, unique, available only to generous supporters content for the game. We won’t sell it as DLC later. We won’t give it away to anyone for any other reason. Only donors at this level or above get this cool thing - an extra level or character, depending on the game. To be clear though, it won’t be something that messes with multi-player balance or gives you some unique advantage. Except for the fact that bragging rights for seeing something others can’t is a unique advantage in life.

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Pledge $100 or more
About $100

LIMITED EDITION T-SHIRT: We’re a digital goods producer, so making these real-world, physical, limited edition t-shirts is a big deal for us. But you’ve given so much, we want to give you a special thanks. These shirts will never be sold or produced in any other way. They’re only for you most generous of voters.

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Pledge $500 or more
About $500

YOU, IN THE GAME: We’ll slip your name into the game, turning you into a lovely Easter Egg. Your name will live on forever in digital glory, attached to an NPC or the name of a store or a sign in the background. Only a limited number of these available, so pledge now!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,000 or more
About $1,000

AIN'T LIFE GRAND?: $1000? Really? Wow, you’re awesome. As a meager expression of our thanks, we’ll give you all the above stuff, a personalized piece of art, and free copies of everything we make for the next five years. And the font size for your thanks in the game credits will be HUGE!